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For three decades, paleontologists the world over have been split over a provocative finding: Did a dwarf species of Tyrannosaurus rex really once exist?In 1988, paleontologist Robert Bakker and his colleagues at the Cleveland (Ohio) Museum of Natural History reclassified a specimen first discovered in 1942 and displayed at the museum.It was, they said, the first known member of a small new species they baptized as the Nanotyrannus.Then, in 2001, another team discovered the nearly complete skeleton of a small Tyrannosaurus near the town of Ekalaka in Montana, in the rich and intensively studied fossil formation known as Hell Creek.They named the creature — barely bigger than a draft horse — Jane and soon classified it as a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.But a minority of specialists continued to insist that it…

U.S. health officials will ban most flavored e-cigarettes popular with underage teenagers, but with major exceptions that benefit vaping manufacturers, retailers and adults who use the nicotine-emitting devices.The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will prohibit fruit, candy, mint and dessert flavors from small, cartridge-based e-cigarettes that are popular with high school students. But menthol and tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes will be allowed to remain on the market.The flavor ban will also entirely exempt large, tank-based vaping devices, which are primarily sold in vape shops that cater to adult smokers.Together, the two exemptions represent a significant retreat from President Donald Trump's original plan announced four months ago, which would have banned all vaping flavors, including menthol, from all types of e-cigarettes. The new policy will preserve a significant portion of the multibillion-dollar…

The number of deaths in major air crashes around the globe fell by more than half in 2019, according to a report by an aviation consulting firm.The To70 consultancy said Wednesday that 257 people died in eight fatal accidents in 2019. That compares to 534 deaths in 13 fatal accidents in 2018.The 2019 death toll rose in late December after a Bek Air Fokker 100 crashed Friday on takeoff in Kazakhstan, killing 12 people. The worst crash of 2019 involved an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane that crashed March 10, killing 157 people.The report said fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019 that led to the grounding of Boeing's 737 MAX raised questions about how aviation authorities approve aviation designs derived from older ones, and about how much pilot training…

A Google artificial intelligence system proved as good as expert radiologists at detecting which women had breast cancer based on screening mammograms and showed promise at reducing errors, researchers in the United States and Britain reported.The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is the latest to show that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the accuracy of screening for breast cancer, which affects one in eight women globally.Radiologists miss about 20% of breast cancers in mammograms, the American Cancer Society says, and half of all women who get the screenings over a 10-year period have a false positive result.The findings of the study, developed with Alphabet Inc's DeepMind AI unit, which merged with Google Health in September, represent a major advance in the potential for the early…

Thanks to a very special gift, one family is exceptionally grateful to be celebrating the New Year together this year. Bronwyn Benito tells us about a new surgical technique that makes it easier to give the gift of life. ...

Illinois started the new year on a high note Wednesday, becoming the latest U.S. state to legalize recreational marijuana as the governor pardoned thousands for past low-level cannabis convictions.The Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act will allow residents 21 and older to legally purchase marijuana and will expunge thousands of individuals' criminal convictions throughout the state."We are restoring rights to many tens of thousands of Illinoisans. We are bringing regulation and safety to a previously unsafe and illegal market. And we are creating a new industry that puts equity at its very core," Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said in a statement.On Tuesday night, Pritzker granted 11,017 pardons for people with low-level cannabis convictions, the first round of a planned total of more than 700,000.A long line of people brave the cold…

The world has a plastic pollution problem.  That is the big picture.  It has countries looking for creative solutions.  Environmentalists say there's no more time for talk.  As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, they say it's time for action  ...

Haunted by the ongoing war in their country, more and more youth in Yemen are facing mental health problems. The International Committee of the Red Cross says that widespread conflict, severe economic decline, food insecurity and the collapse of essential public services continue to take an enormous toll on the population's mental and physical health. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports ...

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the federal government will soon announce a new strategy to tackle underage vaping, promising, “We’re going to protect our families, we’re going to protect our children, and we’re going to protect the industry.”Trump was vague about what the plan would entail, but suggested “certain flavors” in cartridge-based e-cigarettes would be taken off the market “for a period of time.”The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration would ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes, such as those sold by Juul and NJOY. E-cigarette pods formulated to taste like tobacco or menthol would still be allowed.The Journal also reported that tank-based vaping systems, which are less popular among teenagers, would still allow users to custom-mix flavors. The Journal report cited anonymous…

East Africa has the highest rates of cervical cancer in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In October, Kenya launched a mass vaccination of girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV),which can lead to cervical cancer. For those who acquired HPV, the vaccine is being welcomed in hopes of protecting their children against cervical cancer. Rael Ombuor reports from Nairobi.   ...

Carol Lee collaborates with University of Montpellier colleagues researching how tiny plankton cope in an ever-saltier Mediterranean sea and a freshwater-infused Baltic one. From the foothills of the French Pyrenees, Camille Parmesan experiments with cutting-edge climate modeling, hoping it may offer clues for future biodiversity conservation.Both biologists have pulled up stakes from previous posts, counting among U.S. scientists who are responding to the Trump administration's upcoming withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement with their feet.  "I know quite a lot of really top-notch scientists who have just moved to other countries," said Lee, citing colleagues who have headed to Europe and China. "And a big, alarming trend is there are a lot of very smart people who are not moving to the U.S."  "I know quite a lot of really top-notch…

A recent study has revealed an increase in violence against women and children resulting from the conflict in Yemen.   Research by the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies shows women and girls in Yemen have been affected by rape, kidnapping and domestic violence, while boys face sexual violence and are forced to work.    Yemen’s nearly five-year conflict is having disastrous consequences on its civilian population, according to the recent study, “A Gendered Crisis: Understanding Experiences of Yemen’s War.”   The qualitative research involving some 90 focus group discussions across Yemen’s political and socioeconomic classes found that unemployment has undermined men’s traditional role as breadwinner, driving many to seek a salary by fighting on the front lines. Rising poverty has left parents unable to educate their children.  The middle class has…

Amid an alarming surge in vaping among teenagers, Congress recently approved an unprecedented measure to curb tobacco and e-cigarette use nationwide, especially among teens.Congress voted to increase the legal age to buy tobacco and vape products from 18 to 21 as part of a major fiscal 2020 spending agreement. First introduced in May by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, and Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, the "Tobacco-Free Youth Act" has bipartisan support and aims to tackle youth vaping.President Donald Trump had signaled his support of the measure and signed the underlying legislation Dec. 20. However, under pressure from his own campaign manager and special interests, Trump appears to be reconsidering a plan he unveiled in September to reduce youth vaping by banning flavored e-cigarettes — an…

The year 2019 saw a totally preventable disease claim the lives of more than 140,000 people, mostly children and babies. It happened as unvaccinated children created a pathway for measles outbreaks globally. Some of the outbreaks are still continuing.Samoan Emite Talaalevea lost her daughter. She says she never expected to see such grief."I was shocked, it was very hard to me to accept what happened,” she said.Measles claimed the lives of some 81 people on the island, mostly children and infants. Robert Linkins, an expert on measles in the Global Immunization Division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the deaths were completely preventable."Two shots of a vaccine could have saved those children's lives."The vaccination rate in Samoa dropped to about 30% after two children died from a…

The World Health Organization says East Africa has the highest rate of cervical cancer in the world.  In October, Kenya launched a mass vaccination of girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer.  The vaccine is being welcomed by HPV patients, who hope their children will be protected better than they were.Thirty-year-old Jacinta Agunja tested positive in 2016 for one of the human papillomaviruses (HPV) that leads to cervical cancer.After two years of intensive and expensive treatment, she was free of HPV and did not get cancer.  At least seven women die every day in Kenya from cervical cancer, according to the Ministry of Health.The ministry says the HPV vaccine could cut the rate of cervical cancer by up to 70 percent.Cicily Kariuki is Kenya's Cabinet…

Chinese experts are investigating an outbreak of respiratory illness in the central city of Wuhan that some have likened to the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic.The city's health commission said in a statement Tuesday that 27 people had fallen ill with a strain of viral pneumonia, seven of whom were in serious condition.It said most had visited a seafood market in the sprawling city, apparently pointing to a common origin of the outbreak.Unverified information online said the illnesses were caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged from southern China and killed more than 700 people in several countries and regions. SARS was brought under control through quarantines and other extreme measures, but not before causing a virtual shutdown to travel in China and the region and taking a severe toll on…

Chancellor Angela Merkel is telling Germans in her New Year message that "everything humanly possible" must be done to tackle climate change.Merkel said that there is good reason to be confident about the 2020s in her annual televised message, the text of which was released ahead of its broadcast Tuesday. But she pointed to challenges such as the effect of digitization on people's jobs and, above all, climate change."The warming of our Earth is real. It is threatening. It and the crises arising from global warming were caused by humans," she said. "So we must do everything humanly possible to deal with this challenge for humanity. That is still possible."Merkel said that was the principle behind a recently agreed German package of measures aimed at addressing climate change, which include…

The first space race pitted the United States against what was then the Soviet Union for the bragging rights of being first in space travel. The space race of the 21st century is a quest by many to land the first people on Mars. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi coasts the cosmos in this look at the various space agencies’ 2020 plans to research the Red Planet. ...

There's no doubt that many people around the world see - in magazines and on social media - unrealistic beauty standards and end up feeling unhappy with how they look. But Jessamyn Stanley has never let her body image get in the way of her dream of teaching yoga. Karina Bafradzhian reports from Savannah, Georgia. ...

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says verified attacks on children in conflict have risen threefold since 2010, making the past decade particularly deadly for children. As the decade draws to a close, UNICEF reports children continue to pay a deadly price as conflicts rage around the world. In a video message, UNICEF Executive Director, Henrietta Fore expresses her dismay at the bloody cost of war that claims so many young lives forces them to flee their homes and shatters their dreams for the future."As people prepare to celebrate the coming of the New Year, I hope we also remember those who are not so lucky," she said. "Today, hundreds of millions of children and young people are living in countries and areas torn apart by conflict, from Syria and Yemen,…